Just Part and Parcel of the Glorious Fabric of the Universe

 (Published in Concho River Review, Volume 34, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2020)

One mid-September night, down a Galveston beach, a man – what is the right word, ambled? – yes, this man ambled as if he were absolutely in no rush at all, as if he had world enough and time. And perhaps he did.

His white suit stood out in the inky dark. And as he walked, his head firmly planted downward, he mumbled under his breath, seemingly lost in a concentration so profound. His hair, long and wavy, bordered on being out of control. This thin man in a long-out-of-style white suit with a thin black tie strolled in a sort-of zig-zaggy pattern, until suddenly he stopped and made an abrupt 90 degree left turn.

The next thing the man knew, the always-warm Gulf water was lapping up to his thighs. After a shake of his head, he blinked his eyes in an exaggerated, almost theatrical way, then looked around, as if for the very first time taking note of his surroundings. Focused now, he took in the whole 360 degree sweep of the beach, the seawall, the Gulf. Then, while a lone motorcycle with no governor wound through its gears racing above him down Seawall Boulevard, the man breathed in deeply the Gulf's thick salty smell laced with seaweed, spotted a white lozenge of moon barely seen through wisps of clouds. Then he suddenly remembered their name and said it aloud, “Cirrus.”

And the name of the beach. Stewart Beach, where one balmy night soon after World War II his mother had won a jitterbug dance contest in one of those dance clubs all the rage with the younger set back then, before . . . well, everything. Now the beach was all but deserted, it being late, a bit past 10. And those dance clubs? All long gone.

Out in the Gulf, he noticed the lights of a ship, probably an oil tanker by its outline, waiting its turn to enter the bay to unload its highly-viscous cargo to some smoke-belching refinery on the ship channel. Behind the tanker a sideways fist of lightning flashed.

With only the dullest thoughts echoing inside his skull, he began to slowly wade back to the beach, steeling himself for the long, wet slog back to his motel room. Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a handful of the old Indians of Galveston. Karwankawas – six feet tall – both men and women accompanied by their coyote-like dogs. One of which now howled at the almost full moon.

If the man in the white suit was shocked by the sudden appearance of long-ago Indians, he didn't show it. He looked at them, curious, to be sure, but his thin face betrayed no surprise. And as he stood there, he couldn't help but catch a whiff of the Indians’ smell – dirt and alligator fat smeared over their bodies to keep the clouds of mosquitoes that have always haunted this island at bay.

For their part, the Indians stared back at him with increasing suspicion Their great muscled bodies seemed ready to let fly a phalanx of arrows at yet another small man of European descent, the kind of whom they knew all too well. What else could they think of this thin wisp of a man, this walking ghost in white suit and thin tie?

He continued down the beach, the dry sand making it difficult to walk with any speed. He then spotted a figure in front of him on a leeward slope of dune -- the Spanish castaway, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, himself, thrown up on this isle wearing nothing, like his Indian wardens. When in Rome . . .

The Karankawas, a word meaning dog lover in their own language, were dying of a European sickness that infected the stomach. They could keep nothing down. One orifice or another was always working overtime until death like sweet mercy came.

Acting as a medicine man, de Vaca made the sign of the cross over one ravaged Karankawa – once well-muscled, now bones as dry and brittle as the opened oyster shells he rested upon. De Vaca recited a Pater Noster and for good measure threw in an Ave Maria. Prayed to God he was not murdered in his sleep, a jagged knife across his gullet, in this land of perpetual misfortune, this god-awful island, a true isla de Malhado, the Island’s original Spanish name, the island of doom.

By the moon's light, the thin man could just barely make out how the Karankawa's elaborate tattoos snaked down their nude bodies. But there was also a sound he couldn't quite identify, a sound like the beating of a muffled drum. But when the moonlight hit just right, he finally made out how the reed piercings on their nipples clanked against their chests when they moved. Suddenly these Indians stopped, pointed ahead.

And there stood an assemblage of white men dressed in shirts and breeches from another century. Some had tied scarves around their necks and almost all were full-bearded. Though one was not, only a small mustache graced his upper lip. There he stood beside a cannon, gold doubloons spilling out of his pockets like sand in an hourglass, smirking as he lit the fuse. He was a handsome man with a face equal parts sensual and rapacious.

Jean Lafitte called his empire Campeche and from his Maison Rouge lorded it over the island like every two-bit tyrant. Behind him stood black men chained to one another by leg clamps. Their bodies, shiny with sweat, flashed a bright shade of red with every cannon blast. Those chained black men embodied the real reason the pirate called The Island home. An easy equation really: black human beings to be sold like bales of cotton equaled ever more money in his till. Buy low; sell high, a time-honored, if amoral, fixation.

Then, suddenly, there, smiling his big sloppy drunk grin, was old Jim Bowie, sipping rot-gut, poking his eponymous knife into the starless night. The thin man wanted to stop, to speak to everyone he'd seen, but before he could find the right words, if there were any, screams down the beach interrupted his thoughts.

Ahead of him, about a dozen black men cried out as they picked up the swollen bodies of the drowned. Around them, clouds of flies swarmed everywhere, and the smell of black tar slime kicked up from the very depths of the Gulf permeated the air, the aftermath of the Great 1900 Storm. Next to the wagon, the white overseer took a long swig from a bottle, his Winchester resting on his hip, always ready.

“Boys, you can take a break now. Free whisky!” he cried out in a gravelly voice, trying to sound as companionable as anyone holding people against their will by force of arms could.

But not one of the black men made a move. Drained of emotion now, their movements did not deviate. They went about their task as if they'd mutated from human beings to automatons, lifting and stacking the water-drenched, always uncooperative dead into a flatbed wagon, showing no emotion, whatsoever. The thin man noticed one of the newly stacked, a small girl improbably still clutching her rag doll, waterlogged and tattered, though it was.

“Dammit, boys, can't you hear? I never knew y'all to turn it down before. Free whisky, boys, free whisky.”

Shots echoed between sand dunes.

The thin man raised his head, shouting to the few stars he could see, “I’m just part and parcel of the glorious fabric of the universe!”

As he got to the seawall stairs, he stooped, then knelt to ring the salt water from his pants. The night breeze from the Gulf blew right through him. His teeth chattered. He walked slowly now, very carefully, one leg at a time, up the stairway to the seawall, his dress shoes squeaking with each footfall. His right hand gripped the tottering handrail made from iron pipes.

But once up on the seawall, a young couple suddenly appeared on the sidewalk. The girl wore a pleated plaid skirt, knit sweater, white socks, and loafers. The boy, his jet-black pompadour slicked back, was dressed in roll-up jeans and a plaid shirt. Both ambled, as if mutually lost in their own thoughts. Then, as if choreographed by a Hollywood musical of the era, turned toward each other. The girl looked up at the boy's eyes. Then he looked at her, until some small, white floating object landed in the girl's hair. The boy smiled and picked it out of her curls. Immediately the ash crumbled in his fingers.

Then a yellow pickup truck screeched up, blaring its horn. “Get in, J. D.! Sarge says we're going now.” The boy turned squeezed the girl's hand, smiled, then ran, and with all his young athleticism, leapt into the truck bed from the sidewalk. There his laughing friends managed to catch him. He turned to look at the girl, gave her a big grin, a shy wave. As the truck drove away, she waved back.

His mom and dad, before they ever got those names, so innocent looking. April '48 he thought? He'd have to check. The Texas City Disaster, a ship full of fertilizer blew up, the deadliest industrial accident ever. Almost 600 killed.

The two people who later would be his mom and dad were in English class at Galveston's Ball High that morning when explosions twenty miles away rocked their building. They ended up walking out on the seawall. His Daddy would talk for years about stacking the burnt bodies. Mom always said he was never quite the same after that. He realized they have no idea how, by turns, wonderful and awful their lives will be.

The thin man smiled, his eyes tearing up. Who was he to thank for these – whatever they were – visions, tiny rips in the space-time continuum? His plan now was to walk back to his motel. Though, there was one slight complication. He didn't quite remember where it was exactly.

That might just cause a problem, he admitted to himself. Then shook his head, but couldn't help but laugh at his chronic absentmindedness. Eleven now, the only sounds were from a lone motorcycle barreling down the boulevard, the rustle of palm fronds above his head, the always steady evening breeze from the Gulf, that always sounded to him like The Island breathing, and, of course, his wet dress shoes squeaking with every footfall.

School Daze Angst

      I’m outside my portable classroom with my brand-spanking-new students, reviewing the material we’ve just gone over. It’s a good lesson, creative, because it gets the kids up and about, but having to do with the task at hand. That’s how I roll: reach them, teach them.

      But when I ask for a choral response, all I get is “Huhs?” and “Whats?” and looks stuck somewhere between confused and just plain “I don’t give a care.” After all these years, I’ve ended up with a class of freshmen zombies, The First Period of the Living Dead.

      I raise my voice a few decibels, but I might as well be speaking to the proverbial wall. Nothing I do works. In fact, I start getting pushback.

      “This is boring,” declare a few snarky fishes.

      And then my “favorite” insult comes from some lump slouching against his homies: “This is so gay!”

      Derisive laughter rises from the throng. I can feel my blood pressure rising, sweat pouring from under my arms like a tap’s been opened. I’m ready to wade into the middle of them and take no prisoners. By golly, this is the first day. I can't allow this!

      Then, fortunately, I wake up. Another anxiety dream! I guess it's no surprise. A former colleague warned me after he retired the same thing happened to him. After all, for a quarter-century I wore down carpet or linoleum to threadbare church-mouse thickness, cajoling, proctoring, mentoring — in other words, teaching — easily a couple thousand high school students, mostly in majority poor schools.

      Of course, no one's more surprised than I am that I actually made 25 years as a high school teacher. Some are born to teach. I was just not one of them. I didn’t get into teaching because I'd an overwhelming desire to be around teenagers. In fact, just the opposite was true. I figured I could stand the little punks until something better came along. But the truth is, as the years went on, I began to feel truly blessed by being around so many fine young men and women.

      I’ll always remember my first year, 1988, at Stroman High School in Victoria, Texas, awaiting the usual baptism of fire reserved for new teachers. But before I could even do that, I had to go through mind-bogglingly boring in-services the week before school. The labors of Hercules were a cinch by comparison.

      During that in-service week, I, a college graduate, had parts of the teacher handbook read aloud word for word, as if I couldn’t do that myself. On one particularly torture-filled day, I was barred from working in my room because I had to listen to some motivational speaker’s incredibly lame attempts at humor.

     And that’s pretty much what all teachers go through before the start of school. I’m no prognosticator. I've no idea which of the 20-odd Democratic candidates will win the nomination. But during these first weeks of school, I can safely predict that the anxiety level will be dangerously high for teachers. If you know one, be patient. That person is passing through a circle in hell. It can all work out and usually does, even if, at the time, that’s hard to believe.

      That first year, my last-period class was senior lower-level English. Think Welcome Back, Kotter’s sweathogs, and you’d have a pretty good approximation of the bunch I found waiting for me. Since it was the ’80s, all the girls had their hair teased and moussed up to what looked like a foot or more. They all wore black clothes and globbed on dark eyeliner so thickly they could have auditioned for The Bride of Frankenstein. My rookie knees were shaking. But as has fortunately happened to me more often than not in my career, I grew to love that class.

      Schools all over this country, brimful with anxious teachers and nervous students, will begin or already have begun. I had 25 years of those high-anxiety beginnings. May this year’s crop of teachers have as much luck and fun as I ended up having.

Just Another Pretty Face

      No longer content to hide under our beds, Russians are everywhere these days from fake memes and online trolling to NRA galas, Trump Tower and, maybe, even the White House. It takes me back to my year in Moscow, 1988. Gorby and glasnost were in, as was rock, long hair, and dissent. I felt so at home.

      I was working on my study, which I hoped would be the crowning achievement of my academic career, “The Moral Advancement of the Soviet People Because of Their Contacts with Americans.” Although, much to my surprise, things weren't going so hot. My interviews with Russians would go well, until they found out I was American. Then they'd try to interest me in smuggling, you know, the usual – designer jeans, Playboys, nuclear warheads, toilet paper.

      I got so discouraged I spent most of my time wandering the streets of Moscow, foraging for edible food. One twilight I ended up at the University of Moscow, a hotbed of the kind of activism we saw here in the states during the early eighties. Spying the bulletin board with its gigantic posters advertising a Milton Friedman Fan Club, a conference on how to smirk like Donald Trump (hmm, that might explain some things), and a colloquium on unenlightened self-interest, a small notice in the corner caught my eye.

      It was an announcement of a meeting about, of all things, Lenin. Now this was an eye-opener. What would I find at such a conclave – a cabal of geriatrics planning sedition while comparing gall bladder surgeries? I grabbed the address and went straight there.

     At the meeting, I found thirty people crammed into a living room the size of a walk-in closet, literally sitting on top of one another, eating cabbage rolls, sampling just picked mushrooms, downing shots of vodka along with Pepsi chasers, and arguing passionately about all sorts of intellectual topics. I knew right away I'd come to the right place.

      I overheard a distinguished middle-aged gentleman with a salt and pepper beard argue, as he pointed at a bottle of Pepsi, that they “should not drink this sugary example of capitalist thuggery.”

      “Dmitri, this is perestroika, drink up!” a woman next to him replied.

      “Excuse me,” I interrupted, “what is the purpose of this meeting?

      “What you see before you is our national tragedy, men and women who are in the grips of terrible oppression,” Dmitri answered, then began to weep openly and without shame.

      “Dobryy vecher,” said the woman, “I'm Anna. I'm sorry. Dmitri is much too upset to talk. You see, we are a support group for unemployed Lenin statue makers.”

      Dmitri then grabbed my shoulders, sobbing, “All over the world Lenin statues are being destroyed by peasants who don't understand great art. It is too much to bear!”

      “But can't you make other statues?” I asked.

      “Have you ever seen Lenin's face,” Anna replied.

      She picked up a small statue off the coffee table. The room suddenly went quiet, everyone staring at this simple bronze statuette of Lenin.

      “Look at this face,” she said, then she began to sing (to the tune of “Baby Face”):

                       There's not another one to take his place, Lenin's face.

                       I'm in socialist heaven when I see his pretty face.

      “Look at these cheekbone,” Dmitri sobbed. “I can't sculpt anyone else!”

      “Listen,” Anna said, “we all had years of training and were given all kinds of privileges by the state. We enjoyed dachas, vacations on the Black Sea twice a year, and toilets that actually flushed.”

     Men and women began to cry. Some whimpered, “Imagine, a toilet that actually flushes.”

      “But now,” Anna continued, “we have nothing. Nothing!”

      Then Dmitri screamed, “Life is hell. It is unbearable!”

      Anna slapped him, pulled his face close to hers and gave him a big, passionate kiss. Then whispered in a sexy Lauren Bacall voice, “Dmitri, let us dance, until we drop dead.”

      The meeting quickly broke up, and we had one of those barn-burners for which Russians are justly famous. What an experience for an American in Moscow to be hung by his heels out the window in below-zero weather, while singing such great American favorites as “If I Had a Hammer” and “Rainy Day Women  #12 and 35.”

      Those Russians are such cards. I thought they had forgotten me, and to tell the truth, my feelings (not to mention my frozen extremities) were just a teensy bit hurt. But when the party finished, they dragged me back up, and everyone gave each other big hugs and kisses. Then we did the traditional Russian dance of Danceolovich Polnochke, which roughly translated means “The Groin-Destroying Dance.”

      After several more shots of vodka with Pepsi chasers, we walked out into the early morning streets of Moscow,  promising undying friendship. It was one of my most memorable experiences in Moscow, ranking right ahead of finding a clean bathroom in the Moscow subway.

      Of course, there were many things I learned during my stay. Not to eat food without smelling it, not to let fat bearded men who have been eating cabbage kiss you on the lips, but, most of all, that though in Dmitri's word's “life is hell” we can make it if only we have enough vodka and an unlimited credit line from the Russian mafia, like you-know-who who used to smirk so well. Udachi!

My Neighbor Jerry

[Blogger's note: The piece below originally appeared in the December 26, 2018 issue of The Fort Worth Weekly. Since I was never quite happy with it, I kept reworking  it. This is, I hope, a final version.]

    After I texted a woman down the street that my next-door neighbor, had died, she wrote back, “The grumpy guy?” Yes, the grumpy guy.

      My neighbor Jerry was the quintessential Trump-loving, angry, old, white, working class male – profanely belligerent, proudly politically incorrect, and decidedly racist. And without a doubt, he was the worst neighbor I've ever had. That said, in the past few years, as his health began to fail, we became friends of sorts.

      About 14 years ago when he first moved in, he came over to introduce himself. He told me he was moving from Meadowbrook because it was getting a little too dark over there, “if you know what I mean.” Then if that wasn't enough, he went on to explain that he wanted to be a good neighbor, so I needed to tell him if he did anything wrong. All that left me scratching my head, but, in retrospect, I should've smelled trouble coming.

      It didn't take long. After a few months of relative peace, it became clear that Jerry was a week-end drunk and not a nice one. Because he was spying on some neighborhood teens who were partaking of drugs, he asked me to turn my porch light off. I complied, but one time I forgot and did he tear into me. I explained to him that neighbors don't talk to each other that way,. His response was to double down, dropping f-bombs like a rap star. After that I made damn sure to leave my porch light on.

      Of course, it wasn't much later when his demeanor shifted again. Suddenly, he was all smiles and good cheer. Turned out, Bell Helicopter had laid him off, so he needed to borrow my computer to file for unemployment. I was glad to help, but, as my Daddy used to say, no good deed ever goes unpunished. While hunting and pecking, he noticed the “No War in Iraq” stickers on my file cabinet. It was now confirmed. I was one those anti-American subversives Fox News had warned him about. And from then on, living next door to him became a living hell.

      One of his favorite modes of harassment was to wait till almost midnight then rev up his Dodge Ram truck, his twin glass packs hardly muffling its 318 cubic inch engine, and make our south bedroom windows vibrate like his dual chrome tailpipes. I often had to call the police on him. But one Jim Beam drunk night, he called the police on himself. I'm serious. Cops came over, asked me, what the hell? “Man, that dude's just a few fries short of a Happy Meal, ain't he?” shared one of Fort Worth's finest.

      But the years of belligerence and drinking finally took their toll. About five years ago, Jerry's health began to fail. One day Smoky his German Shepherd got out. Since Jerry was in no shape to chase it, another neighbor and I corralled it. After we returned his much beloved dog, Jerry shook my hand and thanked me enthusiastically. It'd been years since we'd had a civil conversation.

      At the time, my late wife thought our rapprochement a God-send. I wasn't sold it on it myself. But after she died, and Jerry's health continued to decline, I tried to help him, rationalizing that she'd have wanted it that way. I did all matter of things I thought I'd never do. I called ambulances for him. During his frequent hospitalizations, I mowed his yard and picked up his mail. I even lifted him off the ground a couple of times. No easy task, since Jerry was, even in ill-health, a big guy.

      Yet as much as I'd like to wrap this up in a pretty bow and make it a feel-good story of our politically polarized times, I can't quite do it. With his health in decline, Jerry surely mellowed, but he was never an angel. Not many months ago, he bragged how he'd cussed out a young pharmacy tech because of some perceived misstep, while at the same ragging on one of drinking buddies for getting his panties all in a knot over something Jerry'd said.

      But I can't stop thinking how during the past few years, he'd call me “bud” when we talked. I don't know if I really was much of a friend to him. One thing I do know is Jerry wasn't just the grumpy old drunk on our street. He was more than the angry white man people saw from the outside. Like all of us, he had some good in him. I hope he now gets the peace he never quite got in life.

Et Tu, John Miller!

     You got to hand it to the Trump Administration, even though they've had more turnover than your neighborhood Walmart, it's managed to keep a razor-focus on job number one, screwing over the American people. While the nation was riveted by the Kavanaugh free-for-all, the administration proposed weakening mercury regulations (mercury is especially dangerous to children and fetuses) and effectively eliminating the EPA office in charge of children's health. (And they call themselves the pro-life party? Hmmm.)

      With all the distractions and uproar, it would have been easy for the Trump Administration to lose focus, maybe, even cave in to common sense and decency. So how does the Trump Administration do it? According to Ihor Binko, former chief lobbyist for The Big Belching Energy Corporation and now head EPA Administrator for Polluters, a new office created by the Trump Administration, it's all been one hard, long climb.

      “Washington's all aghast,” Ihor said, while sitting at a park bench on the National Mall, munching his favorite hot dog with extra red dye #3. “Cabinet members and twitter storms come and go. A new scandal pops up every other day. But in our office, I make sure we keep our eyes peeled on getting the job done: helping polluters navigate and avoid the administrative state.”

      After I coughed up a good chunk of my tofu wrap, I asked Mr. Binko, wasn't it the EPA's purpose to stop polluters?

      He chuckled. “Lots of people have that mistaken impression. Go figure.”

On deep background, Trump Administration official, John Miller, agreed to talk to me on the phone, “Ihor, fine man, one of our top people. Really! Believe me!”

      “But you don't think weakening mercury rules and eliminating the office for children sends a bad message?”

     “No, that's fake news! And what's your name again? Wheatcroft-Pardue, what is that, a hyphenated name? Sad. Little Kenny, we all know who wears the pants in your family.   You sound like a loser to me, an enemy of the people. I got a good friend in Montana who can body slam you.”

      “Excuse me.”

      “Listen, I'm close to the President. Very, very close, if you know what I mean. You play ball, maybe, I can get you an ambassadorship. Bound to be some shithole country without one now.”

      “I'm not interested in an ambassadorship. I just want to know how the party that claims to be pro-life can back policies that are obviously hazardous to young children?”

      “Pro-life is better. It helped me – uh, the President, in his great, amazing victory. That night was so, so amazing. Nobody thought we could do it. But, interestingly, I was pro-abortion in my younger days. Lot of guys went to Vietnam, but my Vietnam was 5^th Avenue. After all that sex with 10's, (I only do it with 10's, I'm not a loser, like you) no STD's. Nothing, and me, without a condom. Always. Now people say I have small hands. I can tell you I never heard any complaints in bed before. Believe me.”

      So there you have it, despite having a “spokesman“ who way over-shares, you truly have to hand it to the Trump Administration. It has done exactly as promised. Help rich polluters ruin the environment and our children's lives, too. The real question now is, what are we going to do about it?

  

Trump to Refugees: Drop Dead!

     Over my two decades as a high school ESL teacher, my refugee students were my heroes. They'd left their countries in the midst of conflicts and came here to learn a new language and culture, while at the same time navigating the minefields of adolescence. Many were victims of our country's foreign policy. In the nineties, that included my students from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Vietnam. By the time I retired in 2013, Palestine and Iraq were added to that list.

      I'll never forget one Salvadoran student, I had in the early 90's. This young man was quite the charmer, always sporting a big grin, yet it's clear to me now that part of this was show in order to hide what we would call today PTSD. Once, he confessed to me that at night when he heard police helicopters hover over his neighborhood, he always dove under his bed and shook like a leaf because that sound of chopper blades reminded him of los escuadrones de la muerte he and his family had fled in El Salvador. Death squads our country backed with weapons, money, and training.

      In the 20-teens, my Iraqi students recounted to me tales of growing up in a war zone. Immediately after we stupidly invaded their country, they were forced to stay inside their homes because our troops, expecting throngs “with sweets and flowers,” couldn't secure Baghdad. So for months these children at very important ages for their development couldn't go to school. And, of course, when they were finally able to go out, they would often come upon the brutal aftermath of firefights, IEDs, and suicide bombings, not something we'd want any child to experience.

      Today with the Syrian Civil War dragging into its seventh year, and an unstable Middle East, which we are partially responsible for, the world has more refugees than at any time since World War II. In 2016 the UN Refugee Agency estimated that there were 22.5 million refugees in the world. So, in the Age of Trump, what has been our response to this crisis? In one word, obscene.

      The Trump Administration had promised to take in 45,000 refugees during fiscal 2018, a paltry number considering our population of over 325 million, being the largest economy in the world, and, as compared to 2016, when we accepted nearly 85,000 refugees. Even so, at the halfway mark, we've only admitted a little more than 10,000. So in this very important respect, the Trump Administration has gone all in for globalization – or, as Pope Francis called it “the globalization of indifference” to refugees.

      Look no further than recent news for proof of the world's hard-heartedness. Netanyahu just changed his mind about resettling African migrants. Anti-immigrant parties are ascendant in many Poland, Hungary, and now, Italy, while Trump demagogues about “caravans” of “illegals."

      Yet the fact is most refugees are not in Western countries, but in Lebanon, Uganda, Kenya, and Jordan, countries much smaller geographically and economically than we are, so much less able to handle influxes of refugees. If these relatively poorer countries can step up, why can't we?

      We have a moral responsibility to do more, as we have in the past, yet today even mainstream Republicans seemingly equate refugees, who have already gone through a rigorous vetting process, with terrorists. That's not just a lie. It's the big lie on steroids.

But, worst of all, it's self-defeating. Under Trump, the world's opinion of the U.S. has plummeted. A Gallup survey earlier this year documented an almost 20-point drop in global confidence in American leadership.

      But if we accept more refugees, we might be able to change the world's opinion. Our intransigence is especially galling to me because, from my experience, we are good at assimilating refugee students. After the shortest time imaginable, my students, no matter where they came from, would be acting like typical American teenagers. Typical American teens who later would be a credit to their adopted country.
_______________________________________________________________________
Correction: An earlier version of this piece stated that the U.N. Refugee Agency had estimated there to be 65.6 million refugees. That is in error. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimated that there were 65.6 million "forcibly displaced people worldwide." There are an estimated 22.5 million refugees. That error is now corrected.

Believe it or Not, Trump is Not Our Main Problem

      Donald J. Trump, America's fevered dream, a lonely grifter who expertly used fear of the other to ascend to our nation's highest office . . . He strode fully-formed, from New York tabloids and reality TV, with the huckster's gift of gab and the uncanny ability to hone in on other's weaknesses. But from that fateful day he rode down on his golden escalator in Trump Tower, he's been our slow-motion national train wreck from which we cannot for even a day avert our eyes.

      Just try, for I have, and every time I do, I still can't quite ignore him. Just think of all the myriad of ways, he has sullied his office – the constant lying, the shameful bullying of others, his blatant disrespect of our courts and media, his cartoonish threats in the U.N. to destroy another sovereign nation, and, most shameful of all, the defending of Nazis and white supremacists. Interestingly, what would have dominated the news for any other President, the paying off of a porno star, doesn't even make the cut. Chew on that awhile.

      By the dizzying number of unforced errors, Trump has proven his worst detractors correct. He is spectacularly unsuited to be President. So it is with some sadness I have to admit that Trump is not our main problem – even though saying that I know I might well lose my glow-in-the-dark Trump Hater decoder ring that George Soros uses to communicate with we minions of the Deep State.

      A number of factors made Trump's election possible a strong right-wing news media impervious to facts and the manipulation of voters through largely unregulated social media sites, to cite only a few. But whenever I hear the usual political blah-blah-blah about Trump speaking for the forgotten man, Democrats being condescending toward the working class, or Hillary Clinton being such a flawed candidate, I can't shake the notion that something very important is being ignored.

      Namely, that Hillary Clinton, for all her many weaknesses, real and imagined, managed to win by nearly 3 million votes. So the proximate cause of Trump being in the White House is not Russian bots, the mendacious Fox News, or, even, the unpropitious James Comey, but because of the out-dated, convoluted way we pick our Presidents.

      It is richly ironic that the Electoral College, which was supposed to be our bulwark against populist demagogues, made it possible for the most demagogic President ever to win. In Federalist No. 68, Hamilton contends that the Electors would be “most likely to have the information and discernment” to choose wisely so as to avoid selecting someone “not . . . endowed with the requisite qualifications.” To belabor the obvious, in December 2016 when the Electors met last that didn't happen. Instead, they voted for the obviously unqualified Donald J. Trump.

      So far this century, we've had two candidates who lost the popular vote and won the Electoral College, Trump and George W. Bush. And, if you're of my political persuasion, that's more than enough to convince you the Electoral College needs to go.

     But if you still need more reasons, here goes. Part of the Electoral College's original purpose was to keep southern states relevant despite their built-in disadvantage of a disproportionate number of 3/5's of human beings (slaves, in other words) in their populations.

      So it helped slave states, and now it benefits lightly populated, largely rural states that are predominately white. Think, Wyoming. So as the nation becomes ever more diverse and urban, we will continue to elect Presidents by a method that strengthens the vote of the minority at the expense of the majority. This is not one person/one vote. It's not majority rule.

      If your city privileged a mostly white conservative neighborhood by giving their votes more weight, regardless of our political persuasion, we'd all be outraged, but that is exactly what happens with the Electoral College. Wyomingites have 3.6 times the voting power of Californians. The Electoral College is a radically undemocratic anachronism that virtually guarantees we'll have more Presidents who represent the minority of voters, not the majority. It needs to be abolished. Period.

      That can either be done by a constitutional amendment or by the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which is an agreement among states that the popular vote winner will be elected President. Over the years, upwards of 700 amendments have been introduced in Congress to reform or abolish the Electoral College. It's time we finally got the job done.

      In 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto won by two-and-a-half million votes to become President of Mexico. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron won by 10 million votes in France. In neither country, in fact, in no other country does the second-place vote-getter win. Our presidential elections should be no different. Just as Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida should be the last school to face a mass shooting, Donald J. Trump should be the last second-place voter-getter to become President.